July 15, 2009

Every so often, an action hit comes out of nowhere—Mad Max, Terminator, Ricciv.DeStefano. Inevitably, we start hoping that the big budget follow-up can keep the same excitement going, just with huger explosions. A few times—Road Warrior, Terminator II—our dreams come true.

I’ve got to say, though, that this Ricci sequel, The Senate Sotomayor Hearing, has so far been the dullest successor since Matrix Reloaded.

Can’t anybody afford a decent script doctor?

You might almost imagine that Sotomayor was crafted to drive away its audience. It’s as if the people in Washington don’t really want American citizens paying attention.

21 comments:

For those of us who only got the chance to see parts of the hearings, you gave us the SportsCenter highlight real. The game changer. How can anyone argue that race wasn't part of the decision if they can't decisively say that the decision would be equally valid if the races were reversed? It shows that not only are the Obama apparatchiks compromised by forced perspective, they're not even capable of covering up their bias in the face of a fairly simple line of questioning.

No amount of doublespeak can adequately explain the utter miscarriage of justice that typified the Ricci case for more than half a decade.

You'll notice that, in the dialogue Steve quoted, there was nothing by Souter, who joined the dissent in Ricci, and whom Sotomayor will replace. Sotomayor will make things more interesting because she's dumb, but chatty and pushy. So in future cases like Ricci, in between comments by Roberts and Scalia, she'll blurt out something absurd.

Talking of inferior sequels, I'm surprised you haven't yet mentioned the marvelous interview panel scene in The Enforcer, where Clint predicts that putting Tyne Daly on the street as an Inspector - to fulfil the quotas of the Mayor's Office - will get her and her partner blown away. "That's a helluva price to pay for being stylish".Of course, he's proven right by events, although in this case a written test wouldn't have helped: Tyne would surely have aced that, what with her photographical recall of the California Penal Code, and all.

"After listening to a quarter hour of the hearings, I decided that the nominee must be the world's slowest-speaking Puerto Rican."

She's not "Puerto Rican."

She's Irish. Freckles? Hellooooo! I can spot a crypto-Celtic a continent away; the obstreperousness, Papist, the ardor, the cadence, the wordiness...I hear she drinks, too. The Bronx has always had a large Irish community, and do we *know* for certain her father wasn't Irish?

Lots of Irish were sent to the West Indies, you'll recall, as indentured servants, there are recorded cases of freed blacks owning Irish servants there. Some must've made it to P.R.

The Slaves That Time Forgot:" King James II and Charles I led a continued effort to enslave the Irish. Britain’s famed Oliver Cromwell furthered this practice of dehumanizing one’s next door neighbor.

The Irish slave trade began when James II sold 30,000 Irish prisoners as slaves to the New World. His Proclamation of 1625 required Irish political prisoners be sent overseas and sold to English settlers in the West Indies. By the mid 1600s, the Irish were the main slaves sold to Antigua and Montserrat. At that time, 70% of the total population of Montserrat were Irish slaves."

Are you also aware that Justices Scalia and Thomas regularly face off on who can pump their mahogany desks overhead more times while their clerks lay bets?

Did you know that "Nino" Scalia's buddies shanghaied him to a bachelor party at a strip club 30 years ago? Nobody really knows what happened, but the very next day every single stripper quit her job and presented herself at Scalia's parish in order to convert to the Catholic Christian faith.

Justice Scalia was strolling in Manhattan when Tony Danza, along with a camera crew for the 'Today' show, accosted him. Danza said, "Hey-a Justice Scalia! Howsabout a gif certificate to da Olive Garden!" Witnesses reported that Scalia grabbed the camera, smashed it over Danza's head, disgustedly tossed a couple of C-notes on the prostrate Danza, and stormed off. Danza refused to press charges.

Matrix Reloaded offered a cinematic first: a boring orgy scene. The whole second movie was boring, without any emotional investment whatsoever.

Like Sotomayor. It's a done deal, Sixty votes by Dems makes it all over but the shouting. Al Franken, Mr. Sixty, spent his time asking Sotomayor (no kidding) if she recalled which sole case the prosecutor in Perry Mason won. Really.

Obviously AP felt they needed to rush Obama & Sotomayor some help, so they whipped up an article explaining how Latinas really do possess such a diverse range of accomplishments, experiences, and wisdom. Not just diverse but superior.

Problem is, to write this article they assigned a minority reporter who writes articles about minorities to go and interview six minorities whose chief achievement in life is to write articles about minorities. One seventh of the article is spent dishing about Sotomayor's clothes.

There, now that oughta show how wise and richly experienced Latinas are!

Lucius Vorenus said... Anyone who thinks Matrix Reloaded was boring must be either married or teh ghey.

Monica was hot, as always, but not even she could redeem that load of tripe.

Re Sotomayor: I wonder if the Republicans really want to bother opposing her. Maybe they think she'll be gone in 10-15 years (diabetics don't live very long) and they'll have a shot at choosing her replacement.

Given the filibuster proof majority, she was always a shoe in. The republicans could of at least turned the hearings into real theater, theater that could have effected the next elections. But the stupid party has decided to crawl into a dark corner, refuse food and water and wait for a prolonged suicide by starvation.

Sen Kyl: Judge, you've made some big decisions based on the legal notion of "disparate impact."

Soto: Yes, Senator, that's correct.

Kyl: Just for the folks watching at home, the idea of "disparate impact" describes how policy and political decisions are now made by taking into account the demographic profile of our country at large. Policies are said to have a disparate impact if the demographic results of policies do not reflect the ethnic composition of America. Would you agree with that statement judge.

S: Yes among other things covered by disparate impact.

Kyl: And your job is to interpret litigation so that disparate impact is avoided.

S: That is preferable, yes.

Kyl: Judge, as you look up at this Senate panel, you will notice that the majority party, the Democrats, have twelve members. Nine of those members are ethnic Jews. Now, that works out to 75% of the majority panel are dominated by a single ethnic group whose United States population is around one percent. Do you see this as a case where "disparate impact" has some bearing, and if so, what remedy is open to the Supreme court to correct this lack of Diversity?

Now the media would go ballistic and the GOP would be savaged for days on end, really good theater always does that, but when the fire died down, the country at large would be thinking about "disparate impact" in ways unintended by our betters.

That would have been a superb piece of theater. However, Kyl himself would probably end up as a collateral casualty of the ensuing firestorm, and he wouldn't like that. It would be marginally less incendiary (and possibly more relevant) to point out the number of Catholics on the court.

Anonymous:One seventh of the article is spent dishing about Sotomayor's clothes.

You know, it's funny - I remember Drudge running this picture of her being sworn in, and noticing all the wrinkles in her clothes, and thinking to myself that she's got that stuffy, dowdy, frumpy, power-dyke thang going on.

Do you suppose she thinks that the difference between a wise latina and a stupid latina amounts to the decision on whether or not to - oh, never mind - there's no way in Hades that Komment Kontrol would allow me to finish that sentence.

[Speaking of teh ghey - rumor has it that Drudge is pretty well attuned to the goings-on amongst that crowd, and I wouldn't be at all surprised if he were intentionally pushing the stuffy, dowdy, frumpy angle, with a wink-wink/nod-nod/nudge-nudge/IYKWIMAITYD...]

BTW, in looking for that picture of her wrinkled clothes, I stumbled upon pictures of her ankle cast [e.g. here and here] and was immediately reminded of the character that Bill Murray played in Wild Things.

You don't suppose that she faked an ankle injury so as to elicit jury sympathy from the judiciary committee - do you?

The "wise latina" meme makes about as much sense as "Irish teetotaller". Latinas are known for a great deal of things, but not for their wisdom or personal balance. Puertoricans least of all.Steve might want to look at their credit ratings or teenage pregnancy rates.

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